The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Tamworth Home Care Limited, which covers Tamworth, Lichfield and parts of Warwickshire, as inadequate and placed it into special measures to protect people following an inspection in November.
Tamworth Home Care Limited is a domiciliary care agency, run by a company of the same name, providing personal care to people in their own homes. The service supports older adults who need additional care. At the time of this inspection, the service was supporting 139 people whose primary need was personal care.
This inspection was prompted due to concerns raised with CQC around the quality and safety of care being provided to people, and to check on the progress of improvements CQC told it to make following its last inspection.
At the previous inspection, three breaches of regulations were identified related to safe care and treatment, staffing and governance. CQC took enforcement action and served a warning notice to the provider, highlighting where improvements were needed.
At this inspection, CQC didn’t find significant improvement so the breaches continue. The overall rating for the service, and the ratings for the areas of safe and well-led, drop from requires improvement to inadequate. How effective, caring and responsive the service is have again been rated as requires improvement.
The service has also been placed in special measures, which means it will be kept under close review by CQC to keep people safe while improvements are made.
Amanda Lyndon, CQC deputy director of operations in the midlands, said:
“Our inspection team found that Tamworth Home Care had failed to make the improvements identified at the previous inspection, and the quality of people’s care had deteriorated. We heard from people and relatives who had mixed experiences of the service, which highlighted inconsistent care. Poor leadership was behind this inconsistency, as staff weren’t supported with the good processes and systems needed to provide reliably good care.
“Most people told us that different staff provided their care leading to a lack of consistency. This often meant the person and their family had to repeat what care was needed. While staff involved people in their care by asking about their wishes at an initial assessment, some people told us that these weren’t always met.
“It was concerning that leaders didn’t support staff to keep records of safeguarding concerns, accidents, incidents or near-misses. This meant that the service couldn’t learn from incidents and share this with staff to improve care and prevent them from happening again.
“People said management didn’t act on concerns they had raised. One relative told us they voiced concerns to the office, but despite reassurances felt that nothing changed as a result.
“We have placed Tamworth Home Care in special measures and will continue to monitor the service to make sure that people are being kept safe and improvements are made.”
Inspectors found:
- Staff lacked the skills, knowledge and training needed to support people. Some relatives described incidents where staff failed to correctly operate hoist slings that were used to move their loved ones.
- The service had recently taken over the care of over 40 people from another local domiciliary service that had closed. Some new staff members whose employment had transferred over hadn’t received any induction training from Tamworth Home Care.
- Leaders didn’t provide staff with the information and guidance needed to mitigate risks and keep people safe.
- The service didn’t always document people’s needs, including health conditions and allergies putting people at risk.
- Leaders didn’t listen to feedback and concerns from staff.
- Leaders didn’t ensure staff followed their own policies and procedures in dealing with safeguarding incidents. In one example, the inspection team found that the necessary actions hadn’t been taken, putting that person at risk of harm.
- Leaders lacked oversight of the service. They delegated responsibilities but failed to make sure these were carried out effectively.